For editing documents, such as an electronic document, an editor, such as a senior editor, can either edit the electronic copy directly on the computing device, or may print a hardcopy, and then make hand-written mark-up corrections to the hardcopy. Based on the hardcopy including mark-ups, the senior editor or some other person can change the electronic copy later. Further, in the legal industry, for example, lawyers receive numerous memos and/or briefs that they mark up, edit, revise, and have their assistants make copies of to be distributed to other lawyers or their clients. Some editors may prefer marking-up a hardcopy to marking-up an electronic copy as it can be more convenient or comfortable to their tradition of working with pen and paper.
Further, the format or layout of text, etc., may change on the electronic document as editing marks are added. The three dimensional nature of hardcopy may help some people organize and structure their work and allow free form marking. Further, the editing marks on hardcopy can capture a history of interactions on the document. More than one editor can interact and communicate through written annotations. Lastly, hardcopy does not require any presentation device, such as computers, laptops, PDAs, cellular phones, etc. For these and other reasons, marking-up a document from a hardcopy can be preferred over marking-up an electronic document.
While marking-up the hardcopy can be convenient for the editor, it is also often tedious and time consuming to associate the indicated changes within the electronic document. In many instances, there are significant costs associated with the expense and time required to manually incorporate hand written editing markings such as proofreader's marks into an electronic document. The person must repeatedly reference the hardcopy markup, and manually associate the marking within the unmarked electronic copy.